Theology and Economics: Ministry

Each and every Christian is ordained for ministry at baptism. The big problem with this statement is our dualistic understanding of the word "ministry." We frequently hear people talk about going into the ministry. Some talk about quitting their jobs and going into full-time ministry. On several occasions, I have asked a groups what ministry is. Repeatedly I have heard back from one or more people that ministry is what you do without receiving profit or personal gain.

The Greek word diakonia is the word we translate as both "ministry" and "mission." What does it mean? It means anything done in the employ of another. Consequently, ministry is anything we do in the employ of God. How has God chosen to employ us?

There are three ways that God has chosen to employ us. They are three distinct calls to service, yet they are thoroughly and inextricably related. Identifying each call with a person of the Trinity can be helpful so long as we keep the inextricable unity of the Trinity in mind.

First, there is the call of the Father to creation stewardship. In the first two chapters of Genesis, God gave humanity dominion over creation and told humanity to subdue it. Humanity has been given the mission of "working" the garden. Subduing the earth does not mean abusing or defiling the earth, but neither does it mean leaving it intact and unaltered. God places us as stewards over his resources and commissions us to become co-creative with him, fashioning creation into something more complete. God tells humanity to fill the earth as eikons of his authority and intentions for the created order. As a result of the fall, this work has been frustrated, but the call has not been rescinded.

By uniting Adam and Eve into a family, God established the family as the only pre-fall human institution. The command to fill the earth and subdue it clearly implies that humanity must develop relationships beyond the family to coordinate and accomplish the mission. God does not instruct how to do this or what form such relationships should take. It appears that the formation of human relationships, from the family to ever-widening relationships, is part of the co-creative process humanity will pursue with God. Therefore, we are not just speaking of material resources when we speak of creation stewardship. We are speaking of the whole temporal order of human activity and institutions.

Second, there is the call of the Son to kingdom service. Jesus said:

"For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.
(John 3:16-18 NRSV)

Through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, the Kingdom of God has been established. The forces of evil are thrashing about in the throes of death, but they have been vanquished. God has called us to occupy his Kingdom and be ambassadors until he returns and fully establishes his Kingdom of shalom. Every authority will be brought back under the authority of the Prince of Peace. This future is certain and cannot be altered.

Jesus calls us to bring the future into the present by giving faithful witness in word and deed as to the world order to come. Jesus gave us the Great Commission.

“All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age." (Matthew 28:18b-20 NRSV)

Jesus' last words at his accession were:

“But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth." (Acts 1:8 NRSV)

Kingdom service is bringing the future into the present by carrying on the work of Jesus in our present age.

Third, there is the call of the Holy Spirit to exercise gifts. Every person (without exception) has been given gifts. There are two ways we can think of gifts. One way is when abilities that have nothing to do with our personal makeup or skills are given to us. For whatever reason, the Holy Spirit empowers us to do supernatural (i.e., that which is not natural to our abilities) works. There are also our natural gifts. These gifts emanate from a combination of innate personal characteristics and a lifetime of experience and formation. Whether supernatural or natural gifts, the call of the Holy Spirit is to employ those gifts in creation stewardship and to build up the Kingdom of God.

The sad reality of our dualistic thinking is that the call to creation stewardship has largely atrophied. What the Scripture calls creation stewardship, we now call secular work, which means that it is of the material world and, therefore, of lesser or no consequence when compared to matters that deal with our "spiritual lives." For too many, Kingdom service has ceased to be about "occupy until I come." It has become a call to exit the world (where God will one day come to dwell with humanity) for the hope of some future disembodied spiritual utopia. Others attempt to "breathe the spirit of God" into the secularized natural environment, into themselves, or into their Utopian visions, thus mistaking the created order, or themselves, for God. When it comes to exercising gifts, countless congregations do "spiritual gifts" inventories, but the purpose of these inventories is to figure out which slot in the ecclesiastical machinery a person should fill. Since we all know that ministry occurs only within the church's machinery, helping people understand how their gifts should be used in creation stewardship would not be helping them to understand how they can contribute to the ministry. This is pure madness!!! It is also the reality of the context we live in.

Ministry is not defined by what we do. It is defined by who we are doing it for. God has given us a Trinitarian call, and all work done in response to that call is ministry.

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Comments

[Ted Gossard]

Michael,
I appreciate this. I do wonder what one does with the pastoral letters in considering service. I suppose this is a different form of service as in overseeing/shepherding and serving in the church. That this is one aspect of how we are gifted as individuals in this world.

Dualism is deadening in so many ways. We do need to see our entire lives and work as an enterprise of God's good kingdom into this world.

[Michael Kruse]

"I suppose this is a different form of service as in overseeing/shepherding and serving in the church. That this is one aspect of how we are gifted as individuals in this world."

I fully affirm the need for temporal sturctures and leadership for the body of Christ. They are indeed ministry. My beef is that they are not THE minitry. I would say that they are support functions to the ministry of the Church in the world done by the baptised in day-to-day living, and not THE ministry of the Church in the world to which the baptised come to have their needs met.

I think my next two posts may address more specifically what you are raising here. The problem is we have misunderstood our mission. For fear of stealing my own thunder, I'll stop there and hopefully answer this better shortly. *grin*

(One of the hazzards of dealing with this topic piece by piece is that some of what I am about to write qualifies and interprets what I just wrote. I hope with a couple of more posts or so, the picture becomes more whole.)

[Dana Ames]

Is anyone in the PCUSA leadership thinking like this? Or is the denomination simply "status quo" vs "The Layman"? The mission statement you posted some weeks ago had a few tantalizing statements, but to me it sounded mostly like what to do to keep the denominational structure alive, rather than enliven the people.

Dana

[Michael Kruse]

There are people in leadership who would be highly sympathetic to what I am saying. We are in the midst of a dying paradigm for being a denomination. There are pieces of what I am talking about emerging here and there but I don’t see a distinct vision that offers enough clarity to bring a paradigmatic shift. The new emerging pieces are all tangled up in the old and people are in different stages of coming to grips with what is happening.

I can tell you that Joe Small in the Office of Theology and Worship is a tireless champion of recovering the idea of the priesthood of believers. I can tell you that in conversations I have had with Tom Gillespie, former President of Princeton Seminary, he has told me that the terms “clergy” and “laity” have no place in Reformed theology. If you go to my previous post in this series on clergy and laity and read David Moody’s comment, I can’t count the number of pastors I have encountered who articulate his same frustration. The old paradigm is cracking up but no one has yet “connected the dots” for a new paradigm.

I am glad you raised the issue of the GAC mission work plan from earlier this year. You wrote:

“The mission statement you posted some weeks ago had a few tantalizing statements, but to me it sounded mostly like what to do to keep the denominational structure alive, rather than enliven the people.”

I would say the plan was to make the denominational structure healthy instead of “keep the denominational structure alive” but you are exactly right! We are back to the principle of subsidiarty.

If we view individuals and families at the center of the circle of the Church’s work, and we move in concentric circles out away from the family, we encounter small groups, congregations, presbyteries, synods and GA/GAC, in that order. Subsidiarity says that the structure that exists within each succeeding ring we move away from the family, is to be in support of those structures next closest to the center of the ring. No structure should take upon itself the work that is best done at a level closer to the center. Consequently, you are going to find very little done at the GAC level that enlivens individuals in the pews. They are clear at the other end of the subsidiarity chain. The GAC exists to help synods and presbyteries do what they need to do as they are in service to the rings even closer to the center.

The dysfunction we have had is that when the GAC was formed about twenty years ago, the vision was that we would have an HQ that offered a comprehensive range of programming for every aspect of Christian life. That creates twin problems. First, the overwhelming majority of what people and families need cannot be provided best (or at all) at the GAC level, at the opposite end the subsidiarty continuum. Thus, he GAC can never deliver what it promises. Second, by creating the illusion that these services can be done at the HQ level, people at more local levels quit taking initiative to solve their own problems and begin to look to the national body for answers which they can’t possibly deliver. We not only do not provide what we said but we actually weaken those we are supposed to serve. What we have done at the GAC is take a first crack at discerning what a denominational HQ does that best contributes to health of the next inner ring of structures, who in turn serve their inner rings.

This is probably WAY more than you wanted but your question gave me a wonderful launching pad. *grin*

[Dana Ames]

No problem- I'm getting an education!
D.